Using International Trade Data to Inform the Plant Health and Biosecurity Response in the UK

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-120
Author(s):  
Nicola Spence ◽  
Sam Grant
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Native Species ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Plant Health ◽  
Pests And Diseases ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Uk

Plants are essential for supporting human life, providing food, oxygen and medicine as well as benefits to health from interacting with nature. Plants also play a crucial role in ecosystems and in mitigating the effects of climate change. The importance of plants to humans and to the environment is gaining a higher level of attention in today's political and social landscape. The Great Britain Plant Health and Biosecurity Strategy will be updated this year to reflect upcoming challenges for maintaining high biosecurity standards while the Tree Health Resilience Strategy protects our trees going forward, allowing for adaption to environmental change and building resilience to future threats. Additionally, 2020 is the FAO's International Year of Plant Health providing a unique opportunity to raise the profile of plant heath further on a global scale. Critical to biosecurity is the global trade in plants and plant commodities which may offer us the option to grow plants that are more suited to a future, warmer climate and thus more resilient to climate change, but which brings with it an increased risk of invasive pests and diseases. It is important that we protect our native species and minimise the risks of introducing new pests and diseases. The UK's plant health regime aims to manage that risk to protect the value of plants and trees, both as crops and forestry products, as well as ecosystem services and societal benefits. The UK is a net importer of plants and plant commodities and it is the role of the Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate (PHSI) and the Forestry Commission (FC) to carry out checks on imported material. Given that there are over 1,000 pests on the UK Plant Health Risk Register the challenge cannot be understated. It is unrealistic to expect that we can provide effective protection from all pests and diseases so potentially serious pests which are identified by the UK Plant Health Risk Group are subject to a detailed pest risk analysis (PRA) following internationally agreed methodologies. Import inspections are risk-based and use the outcomes of the PRA as the basis for focusing resource to the highest threats. The experimental statistics released by Defra in March 2020 'Plant Health – international trade and controlled consignments, 2014–2018' were developed to address some of the evidence gaps around plant health related trade and the value of plant health, and to provide users with information on the work of import inspectors.

scholarly journals The Global Economics of Water: Is Water a Source of Comparative Advantage?

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Debaere
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Production Factors ◽  
Traditional Production ◽  
Global Economics

With newly available data, I investigate to what extent countries' international trade exploits the very uneven water resources on a global scale. I find that water is a source of comparative advantage and that relatively water abundant countries export more water-intensive products. Additionally, water contributes significantly less to the pattern of exports than the traditional production factors labor and physical capital. This suggests relatively moderate disruptions to overall trade on a global scale due to changing precipitation in the wake of climate change. (JEL F14, O13, O19, Q15, Q25, Q54)

scholarly journals The evolution of climate change guidance for fluvial flood risk management in England

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas S Reynard ◽  
Alison L Kay ◽  
Molly Anderson ◽  
Bill Donovan ◽  
Caroline Duckworth
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Flood Management ◽  
Flood Risk Management ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Floods are one of the biggest natural hazards to society, and there is increasing concern about the potential impacts of climate change on flood occurrence and magnitude. Furthermore, flood risk is likely to increase in the future not just through increased flood occurrence, but also through socio-economic changes, such as increasing population. The extent to which adaptation measures can offset this increased risk will depend on the level of future climate change, but there exists an urgent need for information on the potential impacts of climate change on floods, so that these can be accounted for by flood management authorities and local planners aiming to reduce flood risk. Agencies across the UK have been pro-active in providing such guidance for many years and in refining it as the science of climate change and hydrological impacts has developed. The history of this guidance for fluvial flood risk in England is presented and discussed here, including the recent adoption of a regional risk-based approach. Such an approach could be developed and applied to flood risk management in other countries, and to other sectors affected by climate change.

Terraforming

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Pak
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Human Impact ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Environmental Awareness ◽  
Environmental Philosophy ◽  
Planetary Environments ◽  
Gaia Hypothesis ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The Uk

This book explores the emergence and development of terraforming in science fiction from H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) to James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar (2009). Terraforming is the process of making other worlds habitable for human life. Its counterpart on Earth—geoengineering—has been positioned as a possible means of addressing the effects of climate change. This book asks how science fiction has imagined the ways we shape both our world and other planets and how stories of terraforming reflect on science, society and environmentalism. It traces the growth of the motif of terraforming in stories by such writers as H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon in the UK, American pulp science fiction by Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, the counter cultural novels of Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin and Ernest Callenbach, and Pamela Sargent’s Venus trilogy, Frederick Turner’s epic poem of terraforming, Genesis, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s acclaimed Mars trilogy. It explores terraforming as a nexus for environmental philosophy, the pastoral, ecology, the Gaia hypothesis, the politics of colonisation and habitation, tradition and memory. This book shows how contemporary environmental awareness and our understanding of climate change is influenced by science fiction, and how terraforming in particular has offered scientists, philosophers, and many other readers a motif to think in complex ways about the human impact on planetary environments. Amidst contemporary anxieties about climate change, terraforming offers an important vantage from which to consider the ways humankind shapes and is shaped by their world.

The UK Plant Health Risk Register: a tool for prioritizing actions

EPPO Bulletin ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. H. A. Baker ◽  
H. Anderson ◽  
S. Bishop ◽  
A. MacLeod ◽  
N. Parkinson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Risk ◽  
Plant Health ◽  
The Uk

scholarly journals Plant Health Protocols for the Reintroduction of Native Plants

2013 ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
Natacha Frachon
Keyword(s):  
Native Species ◽  
Native Plants ◽  
Plant Conservation ◽  
Royal Botanic Garden ◽  
Global Strategy ◽  
Plant Health ◽  
Botanic Gardens ◽  
Botanic Garden ◽  
Pests And Diseases ◽  
Different Populations

Many botanic gardens and conservation agencies are now cultivating threatened native species specifically for reintroduction programmes in response to the second part of Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC). While collection, cultivation and reintroduction techniques are frequently discussed in workshops and described in papers, few seem to have considered the threats of introducing non-native pests, diseases, weeds and hybrids between different populations of the same species. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has been cultivating plants for its Target 8 programme since 2005 and now grows 82 per cent threatened Scottish species. It is running active reintroduction programmes for nine of these species with programmes planned for a further five species. In recent years increasing attention has been paid to reducing the risks of introducing non-native organisms and hybrids between different populations of native species into the wild.This paper describes the protocols that have been developed, including verification, screening for pests and diseases, averting spontaneous hybridisation and preparing plants for reintroduction.

scholarly journals The importance of phylogeny to the study of phenological response to global climate change

2010 ◽  
Vol 365 (1555) ◽  
pp. 3201-3213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles C. Davis ◽  
Charles G. Willis ◽  
Richard B. Primack ◽  
Abraham J. Miller-Rushing
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Native Species ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
Fitness Consequences ◽  
The Uk

Climate change has resulted in major changes in the phenology—i.e. the timing of seasonal activities, such as flowering and bird migration—of some species but not others. These differential responses have been shown to result in ecological mismatches that can have negative fitness consequences. However, the ways in which climate change has shaped changes in biodiversity within and across communities are not well understood. Here, we build on our previous results that established a link between plant species' phenological response to climate change and a phylogenetic bias in species' decline in the eastern United States. We extend a similar approach to plant and bird communities in the United States and the UK that further demonstrates that climate change has differentially impacted species based on their phylogenetic relatedness and shared phenological responses. In plants, phenological responses to climate change are often shared among closely related species (i.e. clades), even between geographically disjunct communities. And in some cases, this has resulted in a phylogenetically biased pattern of non-native species success. In birds, the pattern of decline is phylogenetically biased but is not solely explained by phenological response, which suggests that other traits may better explain this pattern. These results illustrate the ways in which phylogenetic thinking can aid in making generalizations of practical importance and enhance efforts to predict species' responses to future climate change.

scholarly journals Challenges to Cocoa Production in the Face of Climate Change and the Spread of Pests and Diseases

Agronomy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1232
Author(s):  
Christian Cilas ◽  
Philippe Bastide
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Additional Constraint ◽  
The Other ◽  
Plant Health ◽  
Breeding Programs ◽  
Pests And Diseases ◽  
Cocoa Production ◽  
The Face

The evolution of cocoa farming was quickly confronted with the development of pests and diseases. These sanitary constraints have shaped the geographical distribution of production over the centuries. Current climate change adds an additional constraint to the plant health constraints, making the future of cocoa farming more uncertain. Climate change is not only affecting the areas where cocoa is grown for physiological reasons, particularly in relation to changes in water regimes, but also affects the distribution of pests and diseases affecting this crop. These different points are discussed in the light of the trajectories observed in the different cocoa-growing areas. The breeding programs of cocoa trees for sustainable resistance to plant health constraints and climate change are therefore particularly important challenges for cocoa farming, with the other management practices of plantations.

scholarly journals South Africa: An Important Soybean Producer in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Quest for Managing Nematode Pests of the Crop

Agriculture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 242
Author(s):  
Gerhard Engelbrecht ◽  
Sarina Claassens ◽  
Charlotte M. S. Mienie ◽  
Hendrika Fourie
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Resistance ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Parasitic Nematodes ◽  
Soybean Production ◽  
Pests And Diseases ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Significant Damage ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Protein Rich

With an increase in the global population, a protein-rich crop like soybean can help manage food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The expansion of soybean production in recent years lead to increased land requirements for growing the crop and the increased risk of exposing this valuable crop to various pests and diseases. Of these pests, plant-parasitic nematodes (PPN), especially Meloidogyne and Pratylenchus spp., are of great concern. The increase in the population densities of these nematodes can cause significant damage to soybean. Furthermore, the use of crop rotation and cultivars (cvs.) with genetic resistance traits might not be effective for Meloidogyne and Pratylenchus control. This review builds on a previous study and focuses on the current nematode threat facing local soybean production, while probing into possible biological control options that still need to be studied in more detail. As soybean is produced on a global scale, the information generated by local and international researchers is needed. This will address the problem of the current global food demand, which is a matter of pressing importance for developing countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa.

Special Issue on Climate Change (Part 2)

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-97
Author(s):  
Hideaki Karaki ◽  
◽  
Syunsuke Ikeda ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Biological Effects ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Biological Interactions ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Seed Dispersion

Global warming precipitated by human activity in turn affects plants and animals in addition to human life. This special issue on Climate Change (Part 2) presents two reviews on the biological effects of global warming. Higuchi discusses how plants have started to bloom, leaf, and bear fruits earlier than 30 years ago. Birds have started laying eggs earlier than 25 years ago and migrating and singing -- both related to breeding -- earlier than before. Other changes include a shift in the ranges of some plants and animals northward or to higher elevations. One problem resulting from these changes are distortions or mismatches in biological interactions such as predation, pollination, seed dispersion, and parasitism because changes in phenology and habitation ranges vary by species and groups. newpage Global warming is thus also affecting biodiversity and changing ecosystem structures and functioning. In the second review, Kobayashi et al. show how global warming is changing the habitation range of disease-transmitting insects such as mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas. Because insects are cold-blooded, their activities are strongly influenced by environmental temperature. Changes in the distribution of disease-transmitting "vector" insects in turn change the distribution of disease. Summarizing his review, Higuchi wrote that "From a cynical point of view, it could be said that we are currently making an experiment on a global scale to investigate when and how our warming of the entire globe will affect the natural world and our own lifestyles."

scholarly journals Implications of climate change for agricultural productivity in the early twenty-first century

2010 ◽  
Vol 365 (1554) ◽  
pp. 2973-2989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jemma Gornall ◽  
Richard Betts ◽  
Eleanor Burke ◽  
Robin Clark ◽  
Joanne Camp ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Agricultural Productivity ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Pests And Diseases ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Indirect Impacts

This paper reviews recent literature concerning a wide range of processes through which climate change could potentially impact global-scale agricultural productivity, and presents projections of changes in relevant meteorological, hydrological and plant physiological quantities from a climate model ensemble to illustrate key areas of uncertainty. Few global-scale assessments have been carried out, and these are limited in their ability to capture the uncertainty in climate projections, and omit potentially important aspects such as extreme events and changes in pests and diseases. There is a lack of clarity on how climate change impacts on drought are best quantified from an agricultural perspective, with different metrics giving very different impressions of future risk. The dependence of some regional agriculture on remote rainfall, snowmelt and glaciers adds to the complexity. Indirect impacts via sea-level rise, storms and diseases have not been quantified. Perhaps most seriously, there is high uncertainty in the extent to which the direct effects of CO 2 rise on plant physiology will interact with climate change in affecting productivity. At present, the aggregate impacts of climate change on global-scale agricultural productivity cannot be reliably quantified.

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